Uranium Mines Near The Grand Canyon?

October 20, 2008

The American Southwest is—as Tom Lehrer put it—a place "where the scenery's
attractive and the air is radioactive," thanks to the region's history of
uranium mining and nuclear testing. Now, if the Interior Department succeeds
in a quasi-lame-duck
push to overturn a ban on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, the
Southwest's biggest scenic attraction may end up with radioactive water, too. That's
the contention, at least, of environmentalists who have argued that
mining the uranium found in the area's breccia pipes—basically, columns of
broken rock that form from collapsed caves—would release uranium and other
radioactive substances into an aquifer that feeds some of the creeks that run
into the canyon. The House Natural Resources Committee shares their concern,
which is why, in June, it temporarily
withdrew the land around the Grand Canyon from new mining claims. The
committee's power to make these sorts of temporary withdrawals comes from a
little-known rule implementing the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of
1976. This is the rule the Interior Department is now trying to undo.

It's hard to get to the bottom of just how a series of new uranium
mines would impact the Grand Canyon. The Orphan uranium mine, which operated
until 1969 within walking distance of the park's South Rim visitor center, has
almost certainly polluted
a nearby creek, raising its dissolved uranium levels to up to three times
the EPA's limit for drinking water. But concerns about radiation in a few small
tributaries making a noticeable impact on the water of the Colorado River—and
thereby affecting the drinking water of Las Vegas or Southern California—are probably
overblown.

What's really troubling about the prospect of uranium
mines just outside the park is that under the Bush administration's reading of
the 1872 General Mining Act—a law that, believe it or not, still governs
mining on public lands—the government would have no right to stop a proposed
mine even if it were going to have a serious impact on the Grand Canyon. Shortly
before leaving office, the Clinton administration issued new mining regulations
that allowed the Interior Department to deny permits to mining operations that
would cause "significant irreparable harm" to the environment. The Bush
administration quickly undid these rules, leaving federal administrators with no
veto power over mining, no matter how environmentally destructive. Nobody's
denying that we need uranium, or that the area around Grand Canyon National Park
may be as good a place as any to get it. But surely mining next door to a
national treasure ought to be done right, and our current mining rules offer no
way to make sure that happens.